” All dreams spin out from the same web” ~ Native American Saying

When you sit on this pier in Great Island Common, New Castle, the sky seems to wrap around you. This night, after a rain storm, a grand stage of clouds hovered over and just as the sun went down, it’s light set the sky on fire.

Before you arrive at the coast in Rye, New Hampshire, you travel through fresh and salt water marshes. In these coastal lowlands, one can find grasses growing along side tide pools. New Hampshire Geography.

First step is to draw out a design. Here’s a video still I got from YouTube of a Queen Angelfish.
The fish was marked out in pencil on a piece of off white linen.

Yellow and Red paint dye was brushed onto the fabric.

Clear melted wax was brushed over the dried paint dye and areas where I wanted the image left white. I used Batik wax which is a 50/50 blend paraffin and micro crystalline waxes. It’s heated up to about 235 degrees Fahrenheit.

Turquoise dye was mixed with some warm water, making a thick paste.

More water is added to the concentrated dye paste and poured into about 4 quarts of warm water.

I eyeball about 1/2 a teaspoon of salt to the dye bath and mix.

Then I add the wet fabric that has soaked in cool water for a few minutes.

Let the fabric sit for about ten minutes and then take it out. Add a teaspoon of soda ash to the dye bath. Stir the soda ash particles until they melt.

Return the fabric and let it bathe in the dye for thirty minutes or so, agitating it here and there.

Take out fabric and pin it up to dry. I let the fabric dry completely.

After the fabric dried, I melted the wax and brushed it on the places where I wanted it to be this light turquoise.

Also, I added yellow and red dye paint to the image to make some green details in the background. Then, letting it dry to set.

The next dye color I mixed up was Caribbean Blue and followed the same steps as above with the salt and the soda ash.

Making sure to agitate it.

Taking the fabric out after about 30 minutes.

I pinned it up to dry completely.

After letting it dry, I brushed the wax over the greenish dye and all the places I wanted the Caribbean Blue to be.

Next, I soaked the fabric in warm water with just a drop of Synthrapol solution, which is a heavy duty cleaning fluid. It makes a sudsy bath, releasing all the excess dye particles and helping to clean the fibers for the next dye bath.

After rinsing the fabric out in cool water, I make another dye batch of Wisteria, Black and Robin’s Egg Blue to create a deeper shade of blue.

All the same steps are done with each dye bath.

Here, I check to see what each shade of color looks like in front of a window.

I added more wax at this point to cover the all the different colors and where I wanted to keep the last color of dark blue.

Checking all the colors so far through the light.

Adding dots to the fish’s body.

Filling in any gaps where I don’t want the dye to penetrate.

Agitating the fabric in it’s last dye bath of New Black. I use less water for this final dye to make it more concentrated.

Letting it drip dry.

The next day, I give the fabric a good soak in Synthrapol.

Then, after rinsing the fabric, I place it into a large pot of water to boil for a couple of hours.

The boiling takes out most of the wax. Rinsing it in cold water lets you feel where there may be some embedded wax. Usually ironing between two pieces of thick paper, like a brown paper bag, will gets this excess wax out.

The final piece in front of a window.

I did have to add black dye with a fabric pen to the eyeball and a few other places to create particular details.